14 DAY TRIAL // You have not found the perfect love anywhere around you, so you try to discover it in the big world of the Internet...
But a new research points to the fact that you could find the perfect ... disappointment.
We all can tell small lies in our daily life, but online, daters - both men and women - do it extremely easy. These lies refer especially to the daters' height or weight, and sometimes also to their age. "Using a new method that measured the actual difference between profile information and reality, the study revealed that men systematically overestimated their height, while women more commonly underestimated their weight," said Jeffrey Hancock, an assistant professor of communication at Cornell University. "Surprisingly, age-related deception was minimal and did not differ by gender," he said.
Hancock, doctoral student Catalina Toma, and Nicole Ellison, Michigan State University assistant professor, recruited 80 New York subjects, equally divided between sexes, from 4 popular dating Web sites: Match.com, Yahoo Personals, American Singles and Webdate.
52.6 % of the men and 39 % of the women in the study lied about their height, while 64.1 % of the women lied about their weight compared to 60.5 % of the men. 24.3 % hid their real age compared to 13.1 % of the women.
The team collected the weight and height information from their online profiles and after that measured each person's height and weight; the age was taken from the driver's licenses. They considered a lie a discrepancy greater than half on inch (1 cm) for height, five pounds (2 kg) for weight and one year for age.
The team pointed out different methods used by men and women in finding their love. Generally speaking, men look for youth and physical beauty in a woman, while women look for financial ability, level of education and career. "Participants balanced the tension between appearing as attractive as possible, while also being perceived as honest," Hancock said.
Many sites have changed their structure since the study was completed. "They now inquire about general body types rather than request information on a person's specific weight, but the basic tension of trying to appear as attractive as possible without having a deception detected still applies," said Hancock.